Posted on 09/10/2004 3:46:54 AM PDT by carton253
Am rereading Killer Angels after buying the trilogy. My interest in the Gettysburg battlefield as limited to after dark parks while in college there. Since maturing,having Maine grandsons and moving here, I gained a new interest because Laurence Chamberlain was introduced. I will read your post to learn more about this contoversal battle. Just this spring I returned to Little Round Top with my 12 yr old grandson.
I was on Little Round Top this summer as well. What Joshua Chamberlain did on that hill was so honorable and brave! Maine has every reason to be proud of him.
I agree. I've been to Franklin, visited the Carter House and toured what's left of the battlefield.
I can't possibly imagine the sound, horror and bloodshed when the Confederates assaulted the Union lines.
Had Sickles not moved forward against his orders and formed the salient, and had Langstreets Corps moved up the Emmitsburg road from the south the ANV forces would have had to march south, then march north along the Emittsburg road with the entire Union position on their flank. This enfilading fire would have wreaked as much, if not more damage on Longstreets Corps. It must be remembered that the Texas and Alabama troops came within a hairs breadth of turning the Union flank at Little Round Top, only the tenacity and valor of the 20th Maine prevented this. In all the histories of Gettysburg which I have read nowhere is this movement up the Emmitsburg road mentioned. The intnt was always to turn the Union left flank and additionally, the peach orchard area is almost equidistant from both the round tops and seminary ridge. I have stood on that ground....and it is not good ground. It is exposed and would be difficult to resupply and defend.
I have seen no orders to that effect in any history of the battle. To attack up the emmitsburg road under constant enfilading fire would have been a disaster.
I refuse to even answer a person of that little intelligence. :)
Keep your powder dry
but he did make mistakes. Robert E. Lee did as well at Gettysburg>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
There were more than enuff mistakes made at Gettysburg on both sides of the line. What turned the battle, in my opinion, were 2 actions fought but Union Commanders that one would never have predicted. Who could have predicted that Buford, who had rode a desk in obscurity for many yrs, would fight a perfect economy of force delaying action on day 1 giving Reynolds troops time to reenforce?
And who would ever have predicted that an inexperienced volunteer, a professor of rhetoric, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain could, or would, perform in the incredibly courageous manner he did at little round top?
These 2 events won the battle for the Union.
I have always thought that Lee thought that the Union soldiers would flee in the face of a strong, frontal assualt on Cemetary Ridge. They had done so in the past, no reason to think that they would not this time. In any case, it was his best chance for success, and he took it.
Looking across the field, the Union position looks much more vulnerable from the West than it does from the East. From the CSA position the rock wall seems insignificant and the rise very shallow. This is decieving. The field is largely flat and then slopes up toward the end, giving the Union defenders a clear field of fire and a more advantageous position for the critical last 200 yards. Also, the high grass would have obscured the view of what was a very defensible wall. From the Union position, things looked much more defensible, at least to my eyes.
In any case, the Union line held, and the rest is history.
Bump. Just an attempt to start a flame war. Gen. Lee was an honourable man, whose first loyalty was to his state, not to someone intent on subjugating the southern people against their will.
All in all, it was a last ditch effort by Lee, one not very well thought out given his commanders, and not one which was likely to succeed.
I must say I agree.
Personally I feel that Lee should have taken Longstreets advice and move around the Union left in order to put himself between the Union army and Washington. He would have forced Meade to attack him in order to safeguard Washington.
The whole Pennsylvania campaign made little sense, other than feeding the Army of Northern Virginia, and I believe was doomed to failure from the beginning. Lee was in the middle of Northern territory living off the land. Any major battle, regardless of where it was, would consume most of his ammunition and leave him with thousands of wounded to care for hundreds of miles from home. So even if he had won at Gettysburg he couldn't follow up on that. He would still have to go home. If the south was still laboring under the idea that one final battle would end it all then that, too, was a delusion. Had Lee won, the Army of the Potomac would have chalked up yet another loss. Vicksburg would still have fallen, Grant would still have come east, and the war would have ground on to it's inevitable southern defeat.
The initial reason for the invasion of the North was an attempt to get the European Powers to officially recognize the South as an independant Country.
They already did "de facto", but it was never officially stated. Had it been successful, Davis and Lee were hoping that this would have had the effect of Great Britain and France intervening to help settle the dispute and ultimately grant the South's independance.
If it had been for any other reason then yes, I would have to agree that the campaign made little to no sense.
free dixie NOW,sw
That was the thinking of the time, capture the capitol and you win the war. "On to Richmond" and that sort of thing. Grant and Sherman were the ones who turned it away from that. Grant realized that to defeat the confederacy you had to remove their power to make war, take out their army. Sherman realized that in order to win you had to remove the enemy's ability to wage war. Food and supplies were as vital as soldiers and munitions. Take away those and you defeat him as surely as on the battlefield. That was why he marched to the sea.
With respect, the chance of that happening had died the year before. After Second Bull Run, serious consideration was given by the Palmerston government to proposing a negotiated settlement. With the confederate defeat and retreat after their first campaign in the North, the European powers realized that the North wasn't going to be defeated on the battlefield. With the Emancipation Proclamation, the European powers realized that a position for the confederacy would also be a position for continued slavery. And the opportunity was gone for good.
That is true with this thread...perhaps someone could post the "day 1, day 2, and day 3" battle maps of Gettysburg to assist?
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